The Hummingbird House

by Donna Ball

  He knew what he had to do.

  He opened his eyes and took out his phone. He pushed the “on” button but nothing happened. He tried again. And then he understood, and there was nothing he could do but smile. The battery was dead. Of course it was. He had a charger, but it was back in the Winnebago with Artie. Of course it was.

  He glanced around, looking for a friendly looking person who might let him make a call. A lot of people had gotten off in Charlottesville, and about half the seats were empty. It had started to rain while he slept, and the interior was dimmed by the gray skies and rain-streaked windows. The big wipers swished back and forth, pushing rivers of rain toward the side of the front windshield. And, watching them, Josh got a good long look at the face of the driver in the rearview mirror. The bald head, the oversized, crooked nose, the funny little mouth. He was even wearing red plaid golf pants.

  “Artie?” Josh said softly, disbelieving. Then, excitedly, “Hey, Artie!” He pushed himself up and made his way to the front of the bus.

  “Artie, what are you doing here?” He grabbed the driver’s shoulder happily. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, man!”

  The driver, who was not Artie at all but a square-faced man with a perfectly normal nose and an annoyed look on his face, took his eyes off the road for only a moment to glance at Josh, but that was all it took. He didn’t see the car without the headlights coming toward him until it was too late. Reflexively, he jerked the wheel in the opposite direction, and everything spun out of control.

  Peering through the rain-fogged windshield, cursing the taillights that flashed and glowed on the country road ahead of him, Lester Carson steered the rental car with one hand and held the phone with the other. “It’s called The Hummingbird House B&B,” he told his attorney. “It’s off County Road 43. There’s supposed to be a sign. The meeting is set for four o’clock so I sure as hell hope you’re on the road . . .”

  It was at that moment that he realized the taillights in front of him were actually brake lights, and before he could react, the car in front of him started to skid across the road directly in his path, flinging up sheets of water in its wake. He dropped the phone and slammed on the brakes, gripping the wheel in a desperate effort to hold his own vehicle steady. But it was too late.

  ~*~

  At the Hummingbird House, candles were lit in every corner. Lush baskets of lilacs and delicate potted dogwoods brought the pastel colors and sweet scents of the outdoors in without seeming overwhelming or pretentious. The air was filled with the tantalizing aromas of hot hors d’oeuvres, and from a beautifully decked fern bower near the restaurant the cellist that Harmony had brought in from Philadelphia played modern classics. Every one of the colored doors was open to welcome their guests, each one marked with a stunning floral topiary interwoven with miniature white lights. Two liveried valets stood on the front porch with umbrellas. A veritable army of uniformed servers lined the foyer. The champagne was poured into sparkling flutes. Gift bags were lined up on silver trays. Cocktail napkins embossed with the Hummingbird House logo were artfully placed in strategic places. Paul wore Armani, Derrick wore Versace, and Harmony wore a beaded floor-length red gown with a gold chiffon jacket and a tiara in her oversized, over-styled, over-sprayed hair. At four o’clock precisely they took their places on either side of the front door, their broad and welcoming smiles belying their nervousness, and prepared to greet their guests.

  At four thirty they were still standing there, their smiles more frantic than welcoming.

  At four forty-five the champagne was starting to go flat, the hor d’oeuvres had been returned to the kitchen, and Harmony was on the phone with the limousine company. Derrick gripped Paul’s arm, who was banging his head deliberately against the wall and repeating, “I knew it, I knew it …”

  There was a sudden commotion behind them and they both turned quickly, hope springing into their eyes. But it was only Cici, followed closely by Bridget and Lindsay, all of them dripping rain water on the highly polished floors as they shed their rain coats. “Guys, we’re so sorry we’re late, but you wouldn’t believe the accident on the highway! Traffic is backed up for miles. The only way we made it was by turning around and coming in the back way. We parked on the side of the house, like you told us.” Cici stopped and looked around. “You said four, didn’t you? Where is everybody?”

  Derrick caught the eye of one of the servers, who quickly went to collect the rain coats while another one mopped up water from the floor with a white towel. Paul said, “Accident? Did you say accident?”

  “Didn’t you hear the sirens?” Bridget looked around for a mirror to check her hair. “Every fire truck in the county must be out there.”

  Lindsay said, “The worst part is that it was change of shift at the plant, so the road was already a tangle of traffic. It’s going to take hours to clear.”

  Paul and Derrick looked at each other in dismayed comprehension just as Harmony returned, cell phone in hand, and announced grimly, “And that, fellows, is what happened to our limousines. They are being turned back at the county line by the state patrol.”

  Paul drew in a breath, and let it out empty. Derrick said what he could not.

  “That,” he said, looking around regretfully, “I guess, is that.”

  Lindsay placed a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Maybe it won’t take them as long as I thought to clear the traffic. I mean, seriously, if they can just get the overturned bus off the road …”

  Paul looked at her in growing dismay. “Bus? Were people hurt?”

  “Not according to the radio,” Cici said. “At least not badly. From what we could see when we came up the back driveway, it was mostly just a bunch of wet and cold and miserable people standing around waiting for the tow trucks and emergency vehicles to get through.”

  Bridget looked around with genuine distress in her eyes. “All this food can’t go to waste! Surely you can put it back in the refrigerator, tell the chef to hold off on the entrée …”

  “Sautéed scallops,” said Derrick sadly, “cannot go back in the refrigerator.”

  One of the servers came up to Cici with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Pate?” he said.

  Cici looked torn, but Lindsay reached in front of her and helped herself. “What?” she defended when the other two women looked at her in mild reprimand. “It’s going to go to waste.”

  Paul looked confused. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, you could see it from the back driveway?”

  “Well, the bus overturned practically in front of your entrance sign. You know how when you come in the back way there’s a little rise …?”

  Derrick said, “You mean all those hurt people are standing out in the rain at the bottom of our driveway?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Bridget softly, understanding.

  Cici looked around for her coat. “I am an idiot,” she said.

  Paul looked at Derrick. Derrick looked at Harmony. Before either of them could say a word, she raised her arm in the air as though to lead a charge and shouted, “Fernando! Havier! Bring the vans around!”

  Lester Carson, nursing a bruised chest from the airbag but no other noticeable injury, made his way through the tangle of vehicles and the dripping rain. In all his worldly travels, he had never seen anything like it—not just the giant parking lot of dented, haphazardly spun cars, pickups, and vans—but the people. The way they went from car to car, making sure everyone was all right, sharing blankets and first aid kits and even take-out cups of coffee and bottled water. He was certainly no hero, but he helped calm down a frantic mother and get her two little boys out of the backseat, and he left his umbrella with an elderly couple who refused to stay in their car but insisted on making sure no one needed their help. He helped a shaken but otherwise completely uninjured young woman whose Lincoln Town Car had skidded off the road climb onto safe ground again; she probably wouldn’t realize it until later but that big old dinosaur of a car had probably saved her life. The
front fender had actually been clipped by a bus.

  The bus was lying on its side across the road, one shoulder resting against the embankment so that the front of the vehicle was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle away from the pavement. The first thing Lester thought was how much worse it would have been had the vehicle landed flat on either one side or the other, throwing all the passengers across the aisle. The second thing he noticed was that both emergency doors were clear and open. Some guardian angel had definitely been paying attention to his job today.

  The bus driver, easily identifiable in his uniform, was helping people to the ground in the front. At the back door a young man with scrapes on his arms and a bloodied head had stationed himself inside the door and was easing people down to the ground four feet below. Lester rushed forward to help as a boy of about ten years old was lowered over the side by his arms. He was clearly trying very hard not to cry. Lester grabbed the boy’s waist. “I’ve got you, son.”

  The mother followed quickly, tumbling into Lester’s steadying grip in her haste to reach her child. She was crying, but they were mostly tears of relief. Next was a teenage girl with a punk haircut and a bruised lip, a middle-aged woman with an injured hand, and a dazed-looking man who kept saying, “Holy crap, holy crap.” Amazingly, no one seemed to be seriously hurt.

  Finally the young man called from inside, “That’s everybody!” and he jumped to the ground.

  For an endless moment they stared at each other. The chaos, the weeping, the sirens, the chatter, the spattering rain, and the flashing lights all receded around them, shrinking, it seemed, into a single moment of slow and pounding heartbeats, of silent suspended breaths.

  Then Josh said uncertainly, “Dad?”

  Lester Carson took one staggering step forward and threw himself into his son’s embrace, hugging him hard enough to lift his feet off the ground, crushing him and feeling those wiry familiar arms hug him back just as hard. He could not tell whether the hoarse ragged sounds of joy and relief were coming from his throat, or from his son’s.

  Finally he had to break the embrace, had to look at him again, had to make sure it was real. He cupped Josh’s wet and muddied face in his hands, smoothing back the blood-matted hair. He demanded, “Are you all right?”

  Josh replied, searching his face, “I don’t know. Are you real? Are you really here?”

  Lester hugged him again, fiercely. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”

  This time it was Josh who stepped back, regarding the older man with the hunger of a beggar at a feast, but his eyes were clouded with shame and uncertainty. “Dad, I’m so sorry. Not just for what happened before but …I’ve got some stuff to tell you. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  Lester gripped his son’s arms, shaking his head, unable to stop looking at him. “Maybe not as much as you think. I never stopped looking for you, Josh. Not ever. By the time you showed up in the Nevada prison system, you’d already been released, and the girl, Eva …” His expression softened. “She was dead. I’m so sorry, son.”

  Josh’s jaw tightened, and he met his father’s eyes bravely through the rain. “I couldn’t let her go to prison, Dad. I tried to do the right thing. I thought I could take care of her, take care of everything, but it turns out …” he dropped his eyes briefly, “I couldn’t.” He drew a breath, and even through his pain there was pride, and tenderness. “You have a granddaughter. We named her Amy, after Mom. I’m going to find her, Dad. I’m going to find her and bring her home. If it takes the rest of my life.”

  Lester smiled and clasped his son’s shoulder. “I know you will, Josh. That’s what parents do.”

  A woman in a raincoat gripped his shoulder from behind, gesturing and shouting against the rain. “We have food and coffee at the inn,” she said, pointing. “There are vans waiting to take you there just around the corner.”

  Lester smiled and thanked her and put an arm around his son’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, “I have a lot to tell you, too.”

  The Hummingbird House began to fill with stranded travelers, muddied, bedraggled, some of them nursing minor wounds but most of them in need of nothing more than a place to shelter, a comforting touch, and a compassionate smile. Paul and Derrick hurried from group to group, offering clean towels and warm washcloths, while the servers moved through the crowd with platters of scallops and champagne. It would, after all, only go flat if it wasn’t served.

  Harmony stood at the front door, directing traffic with all the efficiency of a field medic doing triage. Telephones and e-mail to the right, hot coffee and blankets to the left, first aid straight ahead. Among the last to arrive was a pale woman in mud-streaked slacks with her dark curls plastered to her head by the rain, who just stood at the bottom of the steps, staring. Harmony, snatching up an umbrella with one hand and her long skirt with another, went out into the rain to get her.

  “Honey, come inside,” she urged, taking the woman’s arm. “We’ve got hot food and blankets.”

  Megan tore her gaze from the wide stone steps to the view beyond, where misty clouds were just beginning to part around a deep violet mountain range. Somewhere within that range, she was sure, was a mountain formation which, when viewed from a certain angle, would look like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. She blinked away a mixture of raindrops and tears of wonder. “This is it,” she said. “This is really it. How did I get here?”

  Harmony peered at her with concern. “Are you okay? Did you hit your head?” Slipping an arm around her waist and holding the umbrella high, she urged her up the steps.

  “Wait,” Megan said, holding back. “I’m supposed to have my picture taken.” She patted her pockets, and an expression of dismay came over her face. “I’ve lost my phone.”

  “It’s okay, honey, we’ve got phones in the house. You can call anyone you want. Just come on in out of the rain.”

  She ushered Megan into the foyer, where Derrick was waiting with a stack of fluffy towels. He wrapped one around Megan’s shoulders, and Harmony murmured meaningfully to him, “We’re a little confused.”

  Megan looked around in bewilderment at the lights, the flowers, the silver trays, and liveried waiters. But when her eyes landed on the gallery wall, a slow and wondering smile began to curve her lips. “Not anymore,” she said.

  A laugh of sheer delight bubbled in the back of her throat as she went to stand in front of the primitive painting of a little girl in a red dress with a sailor collar sitting on the stone steps of the inn. Grinning, she whipped her head around. “Does anyone know where this painting came from?”

  Derrick replied, “Why yes. We found it here, in our shed.” He handed the stack of towels to Harmony and, edging his way between the bus driver and a woman on her cell phone who was saying, “No, we’re fine, we’re fine, really, the most wonderful people took us in, it’s amazing really, we’re fine,” he came to stand beside Megan in front of the painting.

  Megan dug into her pocket and brought out a slim zippered wallet. She opened it and took out the small sepia-toned photograph, handing it to Derrick. “Look,” she said. “That’s my grandmother. I think this painting is of her!”

  Derrick looked at the photograph, and then at the painting. He looked again. “Well, my word. I think you may be right.”

  He returned the photograph and looked at the stranger with renewed interest. The joy on her face had transformed her from a wet and bedraggled victim to a beautiful woman radiating purpose. “What was your grandmother’s name, dear?”

  “Annabelle Stephens,” replied Megan. “Of course, that was her married name.”

  Derrick said, “Annabelle? Are you sure?”

  She laughed. “Of course I’m sure. Why?”

  Derrick just kept looking at her, his expression tense and suspended, as though he hardly dared ask the next question. “I don’t suppose you happen to know what her father’s name was.”

  Megan’s delight became tempered with puzzlement. “Jackson. I’m not sure if it w
as his first name or last, though. He never married my great-grandmother,” she confided. “It was something of a family scandal.”

  Derrick looked a little stunned as he stepped forward and carefully removed the board painting from the wall. He handed it to Megan, and turned it over so that she could read the words written on the back in lead pencil.

  Happy birthday to my darling Annabelle.

  Love,

  Daddy

  She caught her breath, reading the words over and over again. “Oh my goodness,” she said softly. “This is it. This is the birthday present she never got. This is what I came here to find.” She looked up at him in amazement. “What are the odds? I can’t believe the luck.”

  Derrick just stood there, staring at her, staring at the painting, and slowly he began to smile. “My dear,” he said, “you have no idea.”

  Derrick heard someone calling his name and he turned to see the harried-looking chef in his spotless white jacket approaching with a very grim look on his face. “I have to apologize,” he said without preamble. “I want you to know this is not the usual quality of service delivered by The Moveable Feast. I’ve done everything I can, been calling for hours, but the fact is we contracted out the desert course and the pastry chef is stuck in traffic with two gallons of crème fraiche and seventy chocolate hummingbirds painted with edible gold. Melting by now, of course.” He took a deep breath. “All we have to serve is fruit from your garden, I’m afraid. I don’t know what else to do.”